Tag: Video - Page 37 - International Solidarity Movement

Burying Ayoub

by Nathan Stuckey

11 March 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

Twelve year old Ayoub Assalya was murdered today. He was walking to school when an Israeli missile landed next to him. It was seven A.M. He is another casualty of Israel’s latest attack on Gaza. For three days now Gaza has been under bombardment. Eighteen people have been killed. Dozens have been injured.

His funeral was held today in Jabalia, the refugee camp where he lived. We waited outside the mosque for midday prayers to end. The street outside was crowded with people waiting for the funeral. A bus was parked to carry those who could not walk the several kilometers to the cemetery. Ayoub was carried out on a stretcher, a stretcher held by a dozen men, his bloodied face the only thing visible, his body was wrapped in white cloth. His face appeared swollen.

The mourners carried his body east to the cemetery. A sound truck drove along with them. The crowd chanted, “God is great”, “there is no god but god”, and “the martyr is the beloved of God”. Music played and the black flags of Islamic Jihad floated above us. The men walked quickly, down the dusty road out of the camp and towards the cemetery. The day was hot; dust rose under the hundreds of pairs of feet that walked with Ayoub, people used Kleenexes to cover their mouths.

As we approached the cemetery you could see the border. This is the same border where the Israel shot four men yesterday. The four men had been attending the funeral of yesterday’s martyrs. The land leading up the border is barren, there are no trees, Israel bulldozed them all years ago. A giant Israeli gun tower looms on the horizon. These towers dot the border of Gaza, reminding everyone that Gaza is a prison. In the cemetery though, there are trees, trees growing amidst the graves. Perhaps the graves saved them from the Israeli bulldozers. The cemetery is beautiful, white graves under palm trees. Fruit trees also grow here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9sjdb5iI6w

As we enter the cemetery we see that there is another funeral already going on. A few hundred people gathered only a hundred meters away from us, burying yet another martyr. Ayoub is buried in a freshly dug grave. His grave is next to six other fresh graves, graves from martyrs of yesterday. They do not yet have gravestones, their names are written on cardboard attached to concrete blocks. They lower Ayoub into his grave and the men start to fill it with earth.

After the grave is full and a slight mound has formed over Ayoub’s small body one man keeps shoveling earth onto it, others tell him, “khalas”, enough, he doesn’t stop. The man shoveling dirt ignores them, he continues to shovel, finally, someone puts his hand on his arm and leads him away. He is led away, it is final, Ayoub is dead, the funeral is over. The mourning will continue for many years.

Nathan Stuckey is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement

International Women’s Day Marks Hana Shalabi’s 22nd Day of Hunger Strike

8 March 2012 | Palestinian Council of Human Rights Organizations

We, the Palestinian Council of Human Rights Organisations (PCHRO), would like to mark International Women’s Day by expressing our solidarity with administrative detainee Hana Shalabi. Hana is today beginning her 22^nd successive day of hunger strike in protest at her internment without charge or trial and her ongoing ill-treatment at the hands of the Israeli authorities.

Hana, 29 years old, previously spent more than two years in administrative detention before she was released in October 2011 as part of the prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas. Less than four months later she was arrested once more by Israeli authorities at her home near Jenin, when she was beaten with the butt of a rifle by an Israeli soldier. Following her arrest, she was beaten, blindfolded and later forcibly strip-searched and assaulted by an Israeli male soldier. Hana was given a six-month administrative detention order and spent the first three days of her internment in solitary confinement. She was later sentenced to solitary confinement for a further seven days as punishment for her continuing hunger strike.

Internment, also known as administrative detention, is a procedure under which Palestinian detainees are held without charge or trial for periods of up to six months. Detention orders are usually renewed before they expire, and detainees can be held for indefinite periods of time, with several detainees spending up to eight consecutive years in internment. Administrative detainees are held on the basis of “secret material” that is not made available to them or their lawyers, therefore undermining their ability to effectively challenge the detention order.

Israel’s widespread practice of administrative detention, of which Hana Shalabi is yet another victim, constitutes a serious breach of international humanitarian and human rights law. While administrative detention is allowed under international humanitarian law, it must be used only in exceptional circumstances and must uphold fair trial standards, which Israel does not comply with. Israel is currently detaining some 310 Palestinians without charge in administrative detention.

Although no Palestinian is left untouched by the occupation, it is true that women are, in many cases, doubly affected by Israel’s illegal practices. However, internment also affects a large number of Palestinian women indirectly; those wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of detainees who endeavour to maintain community and family structures while they wait indefinitely for their family members to be freed. For example, the wife and daughter of Ahmad Qatamesh, who has been declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, recently saw his detention order renewed for the third consecutive time. Administrative detention, characterised by renewable detention orders and abusive conditions of imprisonment, constitutes a merciless cycle that attempts to suppress the spirit of both the detainees and their families.

While Hana Shalabi’s internment by way of an inhumane system is representative of the utter disregard in which Israel holds the lives and rights of Palestinians, administrative detention is only one of a wide range of violations perpetrated against Palestinian women in the OPT. Palestinian women and girls are, along with the rest of the Palestinian population, regularly subjected to harassment, intimidation and ill-treatment by Israeli military authorities and as a consequence they are denied the enjoyment of basic human rights such as education, health and freedom of movement. Such treatment amounts to an assault on their dignity and security of person in violation of international law.

The international community of States cannot continue to avert its gaze while Israel refuses to apply international human rights law, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), in the OPT. Israel is not only in violation of the positive duty to implement its obligations under CEDAW, but also, through the imposition of illegal policies such as restrictions on the freedom of movement, is in breach of its negative duty not to interfere in the enjoyment of the rights under the Convention.

PCHRO urges the international community to stand in solidarity with Hana, today of all days, as a first step towards ending its longstanding inaction in the face of Israel’s disregard for international law. Hana should not be forced to wait 66 days before the world sits up and takes notice. Given that Israel does not grant due process and humane treatment to Palestinians, she must be released immediately. By failing to do so, the international community will only contribute to the perpetuation of such violations and add to the climate of impunity that currently prevails in the OPT.

The seen and unseen in the No Go Zone

by Nathan Stuckey

7 March 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

Today, like ever Tuesday, we marched into the no go zone north of Beit Hanoun. We gathered by the half destroyed Beit Hanoun Agricultural College and marched north, towards Jerusalem. A Jerusalem that few of the protesters have ever seen, they have never been allowed to go to Jerusalem, it is forbidden to them, just as the land in the no go zone is forbidden to them. Jerusalem and Al Aqsa are unseen. We demonstrated for Al Aqsa and the prisoners. The prisoners too are unseen; Gazans are not allowed to visit their sons and brothers and held in the prisons of the occupation. As we walked down the road toward the no go zone a giant balloon rose over the wall. We are the seen, watched from giant balloons, watched from soldiers in the towers that line the wall, seen from the sights of guns, an Apache helicopter roars in the distance. Local herders tell us that there are tanks behind the wall. For us, the soldiers who look at us through rifle scopes are yet unseen. Later, they will make their appearance. In the sky floats the black flag which flies over the occupation, most of the world refuses to see it, they refuse to recognize it for what it is, but for the people of Palestine it always floats in the sky, like the second moon in a Murakami novel.

We enter the no go zone and walk toward the flags that we have left during previous demonstrations. There are about forty of us, we have no guns, only our voices and our flags. We stop by row of flags we left last week. Sabur Zaaneen from the Local Initiative of Beit Hanoun starts to speak, “Khader Adnan told us that honor is more important than food, Hana Shalabi reminds us that freedom is more important than food, we will continue the struggle.” Both of them are held in Israeli prisons, neither of them have been charges with any crime. Three months ago few people knew who either of them were, they were unseen, but they still existed, within them both was a great power and a great determination. Both of them refuse to be oppressed in silence, their hunger strikes are calls for justice, for honor. They are inspirations to us all.

We sit down under the flags. Our goal is to spend twenty minutes in the no go zone. After only a couple of minutes the unseen Israeli soldiers start to shoot at us. Bullets whistle over our heads, thirty maybe forty of them. We stand up, retreat down a small hill and stop. The young men begin to chant, against the occupation, pledging their lives to defend Al Aqsa, an Al Aqsa that few of them have ever seen, in support of Hana Shalabi, a woman none of us has ever seen. It doesn’t matter that most of them have never seen Al Aqsa, or Jenin, or Hebron, or Jaffa, that they have never seen the homes from which their grandfathers were driven, the orange trees that fed their grandmothers, those things are still theirs, they are still inside of them. Theft does not change possession.

We leave the no go zone when we want, we are not driven out by the Israeli bullets which whistle over our heads. As we leave the no go zone the soldiers come out of hiding and watch us from atop their tower, we see them with our bare eyes, they see us through rifle sights. We have done what we set out to do today, we have tried in our small way to remind people that closing your eyes and saying that you don’t see something does not make it disappear. What is unseen is often more important than what is seen. Food we can all see, honor, none of us can see, but honor is more important than food. Al Aqsa is something that many of the people here have never seen, but it is something for which we are willing to give our lives. Justice cannot be seen, but all of us are willing to fight for it. The struggle will go on, a struggle mostly for unseen things, often unseeable things. It is a struggle for the only things really worth fighting for, justice, freedom, and peace. I have never seen Khader Adnan or Hana Shalabi but I would like to thank them both, for showing us what heroism looks like. Even those that have never seen Al Aqsa know that it is beautiful, that it is worth dying for.

Nathan Stuckey is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement.

We Are With Hana Shalabi and Al Aqsa: Demonstration in the No Go Zone in Beit Hanoun

by Nathan Stuckey

29 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

Israeli riot police have entered the Al Aqsa Mosque Compound, Palestinians have struggling to protect it for days. After 66 days Khader Adnan has ended his hunger strike, hopefully, soon, he will be home with his family. Even before his hunger strike ended the newest one had begun. Hana Shalabi, a young woman from the West Bank, was put into “administrative detention” on February 16, 2012. Like Khader Adnan she has been charged with no crime. Like Khader Adnan she finds dignity more important than food. Hana Shalabi was only recently released from Israeli prisons, freed in the latest prisoner exchange between Israel and Palestine. She had spent over two years in prison when she was released, she had not been charged with a crime that time either. These are the things that inspired this week’s demonstration against the no go zone and the occupation in Beit Hanoun.

As we gathered on the road beside the half destroyed Beit Hanoun Agricultural College the wind blew fiercely. The flags did not wave in the breeze, they were held stretched out in full. Those that did not have flags had posters of Al Aqsa. Music played over the megaphone. We marched quietly and quickly down the road to the no go zone. As we approached the buffer zone the chanting began, dozens of young men pledging to defend Al Aqsa and demanding the end of occupation. We marched to the ditch that bisects the no go zone, we stopped. Sabur Zaaneen from the Local Initiative of Beit Hanoun said a few words, “Al Aqsa is at the center of our nation, it is at the center of our life, we will not abandon it.” Sabur announced that we would symbolically join Hana’s hunger strike, for two hours we would remain in the no go zone and neither eat nor drink.

Soon, the Israeli shooting began. The first bullet I thought was perhaps the crack of a flag in the wind; there was no mistaking the bullets after that. We retreated a bit, then the young men stopped and rallied. The flag we had been standing by now had a hole in it. We walked back toward the wall; soldiers appeared on top of the concrete tower from which they had so recently shot at us. The soldiers started to fire tear gas at us. The fierce wind carried it away too quickly for it to be really effective. They started to shoot at us again. The bullets whistled over our heads. We were unarmed demonstrators, who had not so much as thrown a ball of cotton, who had no guns, being shot at by soldiers in a concrete tower. This is the only way the occupation knows how to speak, with bullets, with tear gas. We started to walk back toward Beit Hanoun, bullets whistling over our heads. We stopped at the edge of the no go zone. Some of us set down to continue our symbolic hunger strike. The Israeli bullets began again. They continued to shoot as we walked back to Beit Hanoun. The entire time the Israeli soldiers shot at us Hana Shalabi refused to eat and drink, her refusal is louder than their bullets. We will win.

In Photos: Clashes in Hebron’s Old city during a ‘Open Shudada Street’ rally

by Emilie Baujard

24 February 2012 | Demotix

Hundreds of Palestinian and international activists protest in Hebron calling for the city’s al-Shuhada Street to be opened up to Palestinian traffic. The Israeli Army dispersed the protestors with stun grenades and tear gas. The Israeli Army entered the Old City to disperse the demonstration.

Open Shuhada Street – Click here for more photos

Palestinian youth activist and native of Al Bireh, Fadi Quran,was pepper sprayed in the face, assaulted, and arrested by Israeli forces while attending a protest calling for the reopening of a major thoroughfare for Palestinians in the city of Hebron.

The full video is available at http://on.fb.me/Ad6E4w and was filmed by Amer Abdeen.